Rift Over Gore Remarks Reveals Cultural Gap

The furor that erupted at a key Pacific Rim summit here after Vice President Al Gore criticized Malaysia’s human rights record reveals, in part, the deep gap between Asian sensitivities and brash American ways.

Leaders from Australia, Canada, Indonesia and the Philippines previously had expressed concern for the plight of imprisoned Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim. And several joined Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in arranging visits with Anwar’s wife during breaks in the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation proceedings.

Several leaders also said they had raised the issue in private meetings with Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Asia’s longest-serving leader.

But Gore, who broke protocol by deliberately avoiding a one-on-one session with the APEC host, was the only leader to speak out in public during the summit--and the only one to praise protesters seeking Mahathir’s ouster.

Gore’s praise Monday for “the brave people of Malaysia” who have battled armed riot police in anti-government protests in recent weeks enraged his Malaysian hosts, drew gentle rebukes from a surprising number of other Asian government leaders and caused a serious rift at the 21-member summit.

The bulk of the controversial speech was written last week for President Clinton by the National Security Council, U.S. officials said. Clinton canceled his trip because of the Iraq crisis; Gore was a last-minute fill-in. Gore left for home Wednesday night, shortly before Clinton took off from Washington for a five-day visit to Japan, where he arrived today, and South Korea.

A White House aide said Gore “put his stamp on the speech, especially the economic section” while on the plane, but “he very much kept to the script he was given” on the political aspects.

The aide and other U.S. officials insisted that Gore wasn’t trying to preach or take sides in Malaysia’s political maelstrom. They said he saluted “reformasi,” a term adopted here after it became the battle cry for Indonesians who toppled authoritarian ruler Suharto in May, as part of a broader call for democracy.

“What the vice president articulated was essential American policy,” one official said. “It would have been a very similar speech if the president were here. That said, they are very different individuals and have very different speaking styles.”

A White House official denied suggestions widely heard here this week that Gore had squandered an opportunity to show strong U.S. leadership at a time when most of Asia is reeling from a severe economic depression.

“I think it’s part of American leadership to assert American vision, values and thoughts,” the official said. If Gore had come to Malaysia and not spoken out for democracy, he added, “people would accuse us of pulling our punches. We had to say something.”

Nonetheless, senior U.S. officials acknowledged Wednesday that the uproar may have created a backlash that could haunt U.S. interests across the region.

And Gore’s speech also backfired another way. Analysts warned that Gore aided Mahathir’s efforts to portray the pro-democracy movement as foreign-backed and thus illegitimate.

Indeed, some leaders of the fledgling reform campaign have publicly distanced themselves from Gore’s comments for fear that they will be tagged U.S. puppets.

“It’s easy to play the nationalist card here,” said a Malaysian financial analyst who is sympathetic to the reformists and Anwar, the ousted deputy prime minister who is their leader. “There are already so many reports that Anwar is part of an American-backed agenda.”

The White House official acknowledged that Gore’s speech could be counterproductive. “It’s an easy shot for all these leaders” to complain of U.S. bullying, he said. “It gives them credibility at home.”

Another senior U.S. official insisted that Gore was “pleased” with the response to his speech because it focused world attention on human rights and his call for democratic institutions as the basis for sustainable economic development, a key component of U.S. foreign policy.

Gore could be accused of hijacking the APEC meeting to mask what many here called an inadequate U.S. response to the economic crisis. But it was also true that the “shocked, shocked” response by other leaders helped overshadow the disappointing progress achieved at APEC this year.

The group failed to forge an agreement to cut or eliminate tariffs in nine key industries, the chief goal of this year’s APEC session. On Wednesday, U.S. Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky angrily blamed Japan’s refusal to open its forestry and fishing industries for what she called an “unconscionable outcome.”

In addition, the final APEC declaration, released Wednesday, was long on lofty goals but short on specifics on how to ease the region’s economic turmoil. The document largely endorsed efforts underway elsewhere to remodel the global financial system and repeated APEC’s long-standing support for trade liberalization.

The uproar over Gore’s comments subsided somewhat Wednesday as the vice president and 20 other leaders attended elaborate closing ceremonies and lined up at a lushly landscaped resort to pose in batik shirts--gifts from Mahathir--for the group’s annual “class picture.”

Gore, whose open-necked shirt had bright salmon sleeves and a brilliant blue-and-green leafy pattern on the front, shook hands warmly and posed for pictures later with leaders from China, the Philippines, Indonesia and several other countries. He did not approach Mahathir.

At the photo op, and then later at a news conference, Mahathir repeatedly sidestepped questions on the spat with Gore. He and Gore did not discuss the speech, he said, and barely spoke at all during the summit. As for Gore’s linkage of democracy with economic gains, Mahathir said, “we didn’t understand that part of the speech.”

Still, Mahathir said he stood by his foreign minister, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, who issued a harshly worded broadside at Gore.

“Malaysians do not take kindly to sanctimonious sermonizing from any foreign quarter, especially the United States, a country which is known to have committed gross violations of human rights,” he said. The U.S. rejected the charge.

* APEC FRICTION: Asia’s economic summit closed on a discordant note. C1